Wednesday, 12 July

There’s Only One Way to End the War in Afghanistan, The Nation
And the surge Donald Trump is poised to authorize is not it. We don’t need to waste more lives and resources in Afghanistan. We don’t need a comprehensive strategy for more war in Afghanistan. We need a simple decision to get out.

Trump and Saudi Arabia Against the World, The Nation
an overarching picture emerges: that the impulsive Donald Trump has met his younger counterpart, Prince Muhammad bin Salman, equally impulsive and blind to even the medium-term consequences of his aggressive initiatives. In addition, in an autocratic monarchy without free speech, elections, or representative government (and with an abominable record on human rights violations), he lacks all checks and balances. The shared obsession of the prince and the president with Iran, which neither of them is able to comprehend in its complexity, has the potential for creating a true global crisis. If anything, the pressure on Trump in his imagined new world order is only increasing to do the Saudis one better and push a regime-change agenda in a big way when it comes to Iran. It’s a formula for disaster on a breathtaking scale.